We have no idea what would have happened if they had blown the whistle after Baby D, as they ought to have done.
I wasn't going to reply but as you have since posted this:
'.... while the people around her were so suspicious of her but
chose not to record those suspicions or even the issues which caused the suspicions ..... was so completely incredibly unbelievable to me that I struggled to accept it was in any way possible or probable....'
I thought I better had.
You know this case and trial far better than me so I'm sure that some of these dates will already be familiar.
Now if the head consultant SB and other doctor JV quoted below are so naive that they have made up all these records of their suspicions and issues, that will surely be revealed in the forthcoming inquiry.
Baby D 22nd June 2015
around a week later on Thursday,
2 July 2015..... '
Stephen Brearey
first connected Lucy Letby to a series of unusual baby deaths on the neonatal unit where they worked in a meeting with the hospital’s head of nursing and two other colleague. At this point he could barely believe it himself. “It can’t be Lucy. Not nice Lucy' ( He'd called a meeting with Alison Kelly, the hospital’s head of nursing, and Eirian Powell, the manager of the neonatal unit' )
He had no proof, Kelly & Powell were incredulous.
'Brearey, the head consultant paediatrician on the unit, carried out an urgent review but 'there was no obvious cause for the deaths' ( according to the link. I assume he was hoping to find obvious natural causes rather than prove the 'unthinkable' )
What did he do next? Another review and raises it with senior managers
Another review, in
October 2015.
'Another review, in October 2015, again found that Letby was the only staff member present at each of the unexplained deaths. Powell is understood to have raised the mortality rate again with Kelly and another senior manager, but the connection to Letby was felt to be just coincidence, according to Brearey.' LL was allowed to remain on the unit. '
Oct 2015 Another consultant, Dr Ravi Jayaram, alerts management to their concerns but is told “not to make a fuss”
“Karen Rees said ‘no’ to that and that there was no evidence.
What next? ( not sure of the date the report was commissioned - possibly Jan 2016)
'....senior doctors, who had been prepared to give the young nurse the benefit of the doubt, were now becoming increasingly concerned. They asked an independent expert, Dr Nimish Subhedar, to carry out a review of the unusual deaths to find any common themes......'
Next?
in
early February 2016....
'Brearey sent the report to the hospital’s medical director, Ian Harvey, in early February 2016 and requested an urgent meeting. ... Yet despite the rising death toll, no such meeting took place for another three months. This, according to Brearey and other senior doctors, is the point when action should have been taken. Letby’s connection to the deaths was now more than just a coincidence'
March 2: Dr Brearey emails Ms Powell about organising a meeting, saying: 'We still need to talk about Letby.'
In
May 2016, by which time Letby had murdered five babies, a hospital manager produced a two-page document responding to the concerns of Brearey and his fellow consultant paediatricians. It was the first time anyone beyond the senior doctors had initiated a formal review of the concerns, despite their gravity.“The assurance” document, seen by the Guardian, set out why Letby was not believed to be the cause of the unusual deaths. It suggests other NHS services may be to blame for the spike in deaths and that: “There is no evidence whatsoever against LL [Letby] other than coincidence”. Brearey feels his concerns have been dismissed.
It took almost two years for the police to be called in to investigate baby deaths at the Countess of Chester hospital. Now, after Letby’s conviction, a picture of ‘Kafkaesque’ obfuscation is emerging
www.theguardian.com
June 24: Child P, one of a set of triplet boys, collapses and dies a day after the death in the unit of his newborn brother, Child O. Dr Brearey phones duty executive on call, Karen Rees, a senior nurse in the urgent care division, to say he and his consultant colleagues do not want Letby to work her next scheduled shift on June 25 but she rejects the plea. ( Rees has since claimed that she didn't have enough info at this stage to suspend LL from the unit)
'She (Ms Rees) was familiar with our concerns already. I explained what had happened and I didn’t want nurse Letby to come back to work the following day or until this was all investigated properly.'
June 2016
The unit's lead consultant Stephen Brearey even went back to management in the hours after Baby P's death on June 24, 2016, begging them to take Letby off the ward. They refused.
June 29: The 'tipping point' has now happened. Consultants discuss recent 'inexplicable' events and then urge hospital bosses to remove Letby from the unit as a safety measure. Dr Brearey tells duty manager Karen Rees to replace Letby. Ms Rees initially refuses, but Letby is then told for the first time of her links to the deaths in a meeting.
- June 30: Letby works her last nursing shift on the neonatal unit.
July 15th 2016' medical director Mr Harvey had asked the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) to conduct a review of the unit's service.' ( I am assuming that Brearey finally thinks he might get a proper investigation but we now know that this RC review was limited in scope by the management team)
September 7: Letby registers a formal grievance procedure against her employer. Around this time the Royal College of Nursing union informs her by letter about allegations surrounding her involvement with a number of deaths. ( she wins this grievance and is rewarded with offers of MA and placement offers for Alder Hey)
November. RCPCH review concludes. ( Doesn't find any evidence of crime because the review had been limited in scope by the management)
then we know what happened next, just days before LL is due to return to the unit, the police are informed, ( There are some links out there which recount how pressure was applied to force notification to the police but I can't be bothered to go re-find them, post is long enough as it is.)
Lucy Letby, 33, from Hereford, murdered seven babies and tried to kill six more while working at the Countess of Chester Hospital neonatal unit between 2015 and 2016.
www.dailymail.co.uk
Jan 2017 Letby parents meet with Chambers and demand letter of apology for LL. Threats are made to report the consultants to the GMC. They get what they want.
Dr Jayaram said Chambers held a meeting with consultants in January 2017 in which he stated: 'I'm drawing a line under this, you will draw a line under this, and if you cross that line, there will be consequences for you.'
In a letter, which has been seen by ITV News, consultants allegedly wrote under duress: 'Dear Lucy, we would like to apologise for any inappropriate comments that may have been made during this difficult period. We are very sorry for the stress and upset that you have experienced in the last year. Please be reassured that patient safety has been our absolute priority during this difficult time.'
How events unfolded in neonatal unit where killer nurse worked at Countess of Chester hospital
www.theguardian.com
whistleblowers' law appeal can be found here.
'The current law, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, has been in place for twenty years. It has failed to effectively protect whistleblowers. Whistleblowers are united in calling for the current law to be replaced'
By Minh Alexander and Clare Sardari @SardariClare, NHS whistleblowers, 18 May 2018 Whistleblowers speak up to protect other people’s rights and to prevent harm to the public. It is up to par…
minhalexander.com